Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey interviewed Edward Snowden today, and the big topic was technology.
During the Q&A (which was broadcast live from the Pardon Snowden Periscope account) Snowden discussed the data that many online companies continue to collect about their users, creating a "quantified world" - and more opportunities for government surveillance.
A new world is coming. It's scary. Freaky. Over the freaky line, if you will. But it is coming. Investors like Ron Conway and Marc Andreessen are investing in it. Companies from Google to startups you've never heard of, like Wovyn or Highlight, are building it. With more than a couple of new ones already on the way that you'll hear about over the next six months.
"Uber is now tracking your location even after you leave the car. A location-tracking feature that the ride-sharing company proposed last year has gone live, despite fierce opposition from privacy advocates."
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Last week, security news site KrebsOnSecurity went dark for more than 24 hours following what was believed to be a record 620 gigabit-per-second denial of service attack brought on by an ensemble of routers, security cameras, or other so-called Internet of Things devices. Now, there's word of a similar attack on a French Web host that peaked at a staggering 1.1 terabits per second, more than 60 percent bigger.
"Just one day after WhatsApp revealed a sea-change in its attitude to user data, by detailing plans to share the mobile numbers and last seen status of its users with parent company Facebook for ad-targeting and marketing purposes, the UK's data protection watchdog has fired a warning shot across Zuckerberg's bows by announcing it intends to investigate the arrangement"
"Facebook-owned messaging giant WhatsApp has announced a big change to its privacy policy which, once a user accepts its new T&Cs, will see it start to share some user data with its parent company - including for ad-targeting purposes on the latter service."
Due to the difference of body shapes and motion patterns, each person can have specific influence patterns on surrounding WIFI signals while she moves indoors, generating a unique pattern on the CSI time series of the WIFI device," the team writes in its report. "FreeSense…is nonintrusive and privacy-preserving compared with existing methods [of human identification].
Say you're scrolling through your Facebook Newsfeed and you encounter an ad so eerily well-suited, it seems someone has possibly read your brain.
Maybe your mother's birthday is coming up, and Facebook's showing ads for her local florist. Or maybe you just made a joke aloud about wanting a Jeep, and Instagram's promoting Chrysler dealerships.
Whatever the subject, you've seen ads like this. You've wondered - maybe worried - how they found their way to you.